The Role of Arbitrators in International Commercial Arbitration Proceedings

An arbitrator is not a private judge for hire. The authority to decide a dispute, bind commercial parties, and render an award that courts across jurisdictions will enforce carries duties that begin before appointment and end only with the award.

In international commercial arbitration, parties from different legal systems, sometimes shareholders in a cross-border company and sometimes ordinary contract counterparties, submit their dispute to a tribunal of their own choosing. The arbitrator's independence, impartiality, and conduct of the proceedings are what make that mechanism credible.

Understand the arbitrator's role, and the architecture of international commercial arbitration becomes legible.

This note examines that role under Indian law, framed by the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (the "Act"), which is itself modelled on the UNCITRAL Model Law, and against the international standards, principally the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration and institutional rules, that operate alongside it.

The Foundation: Independence and Impartiality

The arbitrator's first obligation is neutrality, and it is not left to conscience. Section 12(1) of the Act requires any person approached for appointment to disclose in writing any circumstance that is likely to give rise to justifiable doubts about their independence or impartiality, together with any circumstance that might affect their ability to devote sufficient time to the arbitration. The duty is continuous. It extends from the moment of appointment to the conclusion of the proceedings, and any such circumstance arising during the course of the arbitration must be disclosed promptly.

The 2015 amendment to the Act gave this obligation teeth by inserting two schedules, both drawn from the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration. The Fifth Schedule lists the grounds that give rise to justifiable doubts, guiding whether an arbitrator's independence or impartiality may be questioned. The Seventh Schedule goes further: where an arbitrator's relationship with a party, counsel, or the subject matter falls within its categories, that person is ineligible to be appointed at all, and the ineligibility goes to the root of the appointment. The disclosure itself must follow the form prescribed in the Sixth Schedule. Although the 2019 amendment added the Eighth Schedule, it was omitted by the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2021.

The distinction between the Fifth and Seventh Schedules matters in practice. A Fifth Schedule concern is a ground to challenge an arbitrator; a Seventh Schedule relationship is a bar. The latter cannot be cured by the tribunal's confidence in its own fairness, and can be waived only by an express written agreement of the parties after the dispute has arisen, in terms of the proviso to Section 12(5).

Appointment and the Limits of Party Choice

Party autonomy is a cornerstone of international commercial arbitration, but it is not unlimited, and the boundary has recently been redrawn. In Central Organisation for Railway Electrification v. ECI-SPIC-SMO-MCML (JV), (2025) 4 SCC 641, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that clauses permitting one party to unilaterally appoint a sole arbitrator, or to compel the other party to select from a panel it has curated, violate the principle of equal treatment and, in public-private contracts, Article 14 of the Constitution. The Court applied the ruling prospectively, to appointments made after the date of the judgment.

That decision built on a settled line. In TRF Ltd. v. Energo Engineering Projects Ltd., (2017) 8 SCC 377, the Court held that a person ineligible to act as arbitrator cannot nominate one either, and in Perkins Eastman Architects DPC v. HSCC (India) Ltd., (2020) 20 SCC 760, it extended that logic to sole-arbitrator appointments by an interested party. The direction of travel is clear: the mechanism by which an arbitrator is chosen must itself be even-handed, because an appointment tainted at its origin cannot produce a neutral tribunal.

Conducting the Proceedings

Once constituted, the tribunal owes the parties a duty that Section 18 of the Act states plainly: each party must be treated with equality and given a full opportunity to present its case. This is the due-process obligation at the heart of arbitration, and it is drawn directly from the UNCITRAL Model Law. An award rendered in breach of this obligation is vulnerable.

Within that constraint, the arbitrator controls the proceedings. The tribunal rules on its own jurisdiction under the principle of competence-competence in Section 16, decides the admissibility and weight of evidence, sets the procedural timetable, and manages the balance between thoroughness and the speed that led the parties to arbitration in the first place. In international matters, this is where the seat of arbitration becomes decisive, since the seat determines the procedural law governing the arbitration and the courts with supervisory jurisdiction over it, a distinction that Indian courts have carefully maintained as separate from the mere venue of hearings.

The Award and Its Aftermath

The arbitrator's central output is a reasoned award. Its authority is considerable: a challenge to an award under Section 34 of the Act lies on narrow grounds, and a court hearing such a challenge does not sit in appeal over the tribunal's findings. This deliberate narrowness is what makes arbitration attractive, but it also raises the stakes of everything that precedes the award. Because the merits are rarely reopened, the integrity of the appointment, the rigour of disclosure, and the fairness of the procedure carry the weight that an appeal would otherwise bear.

Conclusion

The role of the arbitrator in international commercial arbitration is defined by a tension the Act manages rather than resolves: wide authority to decide, tightly bound by duties of independence, disclosure, and equal treatment. The 2015 and 2019 amendments, together with the Supreme Court's recent turn in CORE, have moved in the same direction, tightening the neutrality expected of arbitrators and the appointment process that produces them. For a party entering international commercial arbitration, the practical consequence is that the composition of the tribunal deserves as much scrutiny as the dispute itself, and advising on precisely that is part of the arbitration work undertaken at Agarwal Law Chamber.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It does not create a lawyer-client relationship, and no person should act or refrain from acting on the basis of its contents without seeking specific professional advice on their own circumstances.